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iTunes 7

While I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a fanboy, I’m a big fan of Apple. My powerbook G4, while now a bit underpowered, is still a great example of the crossover between form and function. It ranges from being an able dev environment while being an acceptable fixture on the coffee table when visitors are around.

Problem number one: I use Total Recorder to occasionally record an audio stream to an MP3 – oh no you don’t. After finding a vague reference on USENET to a possible conflict, no amount of tweaking TR helped. This was after installation, so it wasn’t clear whether my library was intact – reverting to v6 was an option, but not a great one at this point. Uninstallation of TR at least stepped around the problem – but it’s not one that can continue. I don’t use TR that much – but that is not the point.

Then there’s the second problem – I have several iPods and iTunes has become part of my routine. I have (too many) podcast subscriptions and an important aspect is the smart playlist that shows my unheard podcasts.

So when iTunes 7 installs and asks “should I arrange your music collection automatically?” I guess I wasn’t expecting it to trawl through my entire hard drive and import all audio and video; when this includes the cache from my external podcast catcher, thus duplicating several hundred podcasts, this is really annoying. Cue much gnashing of teeth while I have to delete a pile of external references. (At least if it had copied those files into the iTunes archive it would have replaced the files and not created new references.)

So I’ve finally cleaned up the podcast references and the nano is going to be updated again. All well and good, but plugging in the nano causes the audio to be disrupted, potentially until stopping and starting again. The nano’s connection is then hard to fathom – sometimes the “do not disconnect” symbol doesn’t go away … and then when it does, it drops out of the list of sources on the screen!

So the verdict so far? Definitely mixed. The new interface is alright – a step up from v6, sure. But worth the hassles? Not yet.

Update: oh, and while we’re at it, the Nano is occasionally stuttering since too. And can’t count the number of tracks in the smart playlist that holds my unheard podcasts – and has some issues with reporting the amount of free space, too.